PROJETO FLORA AMAZÔNICA: EIGHT YEARS OF BINATIONAL BOTANICAL EXPEDITIONS Ghillean T. Prance (*) Bruce W. Nelson (*) MarIene Freitas da Silva (**) Douglas C. Daly (*) SUMMARY A ktitfM of the history and results of tht first eight yean of fieldwork of Projeto flora Amazônica ii given. This binational plant collecting program, sponsored by the Comelho Nacional de Vcòtnvolviintinto Cientifico e Tecnológico and the. National Science foundation, has mounted 25 expedition to many parti of, Brazilian Amazonia. Expeditions have visited both areai threatened with destruction of the forest and remote areas previously unknown botanically. The results have included the collection of 11,916 numbers of vascular plants, 16,442 of cryptogami, ai well ai quantitative inventory of IS.67 hectares of forest with the collection of 7,294*** numbenof iterile voucher coUeetiom. The non-inventory collection* have been made in replicate ieti of 10-13 ui/iete poaible and divided equally between Brazilian and U.S. inititutioni. To date, 55 botanists from many different institutions and withmanydifferentspecialities have taken pant with 36 different Brazilian botanisti. The resulting herbarium material is just beginning to be icorked up and many new species have been collected ai well ai many interesting range extensions and extra material of many rare species. INTRODUCTION AND HISTORY OF THE PROGRAM After eight years of intensive fieldwork in Brazilian Amazonia, the series of papers in this volume seek to present some of the results of the Brazi1ian - U.S. collaborative program entitled Projeto Flora Amazônica. In this paper we givea general overview of the U.S. side of the program and of the overall results. Some specific results which have not been published so far are given in the papers which follow. Programa Flora is a special program of the Brazilian National Research Council (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq) that was (*) The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York 10458-9980 E.E.U.U. (**) INPA, Depto de Botânica, Caixa Postal 478. Manaus. Am. Brasil. *** See note to Table 2 conceived and planned in 1975. The program officially began in 1976, and fieldwork commenced in mid-1977- The main aim of Programa Flora was to accelerate the gathering of information about the plants of all taxonomic groups in all ecosystems of Brazil with an emphasis on their value as natural resources for the future. The original program had four principal objectives: 1. To produce as complete an inventory as possible of the plant resources of BraziI . 2. To make the data gathered available in an easily accessible form so that it can be used for the social and economic benefit of mankind. 3- To establish regional research centers throughout Brazil competent to carry out the inventory on a local basis, in preparation for work on economic uses of pi ants, ecological problems, and conservation of the environment. h. To stimulate the education and training of Brazilian botanists, especially in plant systematics and data management, through graduate courses and short-term training programs. Programa Flora was considered a prerequisite for a more rational management of the plant resources of Brazil, for determining the economic uses of plants, for siting of new highways, for the establishment of agricultural priorities, etc. The program, therefore, had a definite economic emphasis and its promotional literature stressed both economic botany and conservation. Because of the enormous size of Brazil, Programa Flora was divided into five regional projects: Projeto Flora Amazônica, Projeto Flora Nordeste, Projeto Flora Cen tro-Oeste, Projeto Flora Sudeste and Projeto Flora Sul . These areas represent the five major geographic divisions of Brazil which fortunately correspond reasonably well with phytogeographic regions. Programa Flora started with Projeto Flora Amazônica, which covers the largest and least known part of the Brazilian territory. The other regional projects are also in progress and considerable work has been done in northeastern and central Brazil. This paper is concerned only with Projeto Flora Amazônica with which we have been involved. Each individual project has three areas of emphasis: 1. HerbarI a: Specimen label data are being gathered fromall Brazilian herbaria and put into machine~readable form. This is finished in the Amazonian herbaria at Belém and Manaus and in several other Brazilian herbaria. 2. L i brar i es : An inventory of library resources referring to the Brazilian flora was planned for Brazilian and foreign libraries, but has not been implemented as part of the program. 3. Fieldwork: Intensive botanical collecting is carried out especially in little-known areas and in areas threatened by development projects such as roads, mining projects and dams. It is in this part and also in education that the U.S. collaboration has been most developed, and this paper seeks to summarize the results of such collaboration. The Program emphasizes botanical inventory and the establishment of data banks. It does not plan to publish a flora of Brazil, although checklists and many other uses and products of the data bank are possible. Programa Flora is coordinated in Brasília by the CNPq. Projeto Flora Amazônica was initiated in January 1976. Data-gathering from herbarium labels in the Amazonian herbaria is complete, and several new botanists have been trained in Belém and Manaus. Most of the trainee botanists have taken part in the expeditions. These botanists also helped to extract label data from the herbaria of INPA in Manaus and IAN and MG in Be lém and now are involved in fieldwork and collection of new data. Data-gathering at the Brasília herbarium is also complete and work is underway in some other herbaria. Data gathered from the five regional projects are sent to a central organization, the Data Processing Center, organized by the CNPq. This center receives data which is transferred to a machine-readable form ultimately intended for a data bank for manipulation and processing by computers. The TAX IR information retrieval system was mounted in Brasília by Dr. George Estabrook of the University of Michigan. The construction and maintenance of the data bank was contracted to SERPRO (Serviço Fede ral de Processamento de Dados), the federal government data-processing service, and SERPRO produced the data-gathering form which is being used. Recently the central organization of the program has slowed down, but the field activities of the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA) in Manaus and the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi in Belém have continued. The program works closely with these two institutions, and it is their staff and students who comprise most of the Brazilian participants in the field expeditions. Arrangements are currently being made to run the computer data for the Manaus and Belém herbaria on their local computers. The Brazilian organizers of Programa Flora solicited international cooperation in order to obtain data about earlier collections of Brazilian plants, to obtain assistance in the training of personnel, and expertise on computers. Programa Flora organizers were put in touch with the U.S. botanical community by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, which sponsored an initial meeting in Brasilia. This meeting, held in April 1976, paved the way for U.S.-Brazi1 ian cooperation in Projeto Flora Ama zônica. The United States was represented at the meeting in Brasilia by Dr. Jean H. Langenheim (Chairperson), Dr.. Richard S. Cowan, Dr. George Estabrook, Dr. Ghillean T. Prance and Mr. Wesley Copeland (NAS). In meetings involving U.S. botanists it was apparent that the United States is mainly interested in the collection of new data through participation in Projeto Flora expeditions. In return they are able to participate in the other aspects of international cooperation requested by the Brazilians. The Brasília meeting suggested that the best way to cooperate was through a series of international collecting expeditions with an equal number of botanists from each nation. Certain areas of high priority were chosen for collecting, in which expeditions have since taken place. As a result of the meetings in Brasilia, the United States began collaborating on the computer aspects of Programa Flora with the four month visit of Brazilians Cláu dio P. Spiguel and Edson J. Barbosa to the United States to gather information for Programa F)ora. They studied the SELGEM system of the Smithsonian Institution and the TAXIR system of the University of Colorado. Collaboration with the University of Michigan Computing Center was also initiated, and Dr. R. C. Brill introduced the Brazilians to the MTS Computer Terminal System. The Rockefeller Foundation made a small grant to Dr. Robert Bartels, Director of the University of Michigan Computing Center, to pay for release time and airfare to send Dr. Brill to visit Brazil to help with the installation of MTS in that country. Dr. Brill and Dr. Estabrook made their trips to Brazil and mounted the entire system in Brasilia in February and March )378, and Dr. Spigue) studied for his Ph.D. at Michigan. United States participation in the fieldwork began in October 1977 with two international field teams. Since then a succession of expeditions has taken place, the details of which are reported below. The U.S. side of the work has been supported by two grants from the Cooperative Science Program in Latin America of the National Science Foundation made to the New York Botanical Garden (Grants INT77~1 770^ and INT78-233M) , and by two from Systematic Biology (Grants DEB8IO6632 and BSR8^09536). In the United States, the National Academy of Sciences did much of the initial organizing and planning. Later the U.S. side of Programa Flora was organized directly between the International Office of the National Science Foundation and the U.S. botanical community. Programa Flora is a program designed to stimulate progress in Amazonian systematic and economic botany through collecting, training, and greater use of already available data.